Answering Hugo Dante/ALDOT

We received a Facebook comment from UNA SGA president Hugo Dante. In the interest of fairness, as well as in the interest of replying to two specifics in his comment, we're reposting it here in its entirety. We're highlighting the two most egregious comments to address specifically:

For the sake of avoiding misinformation. The signs each cost the city $11 a piece. In addition, they were put up by salaried workers so the price tag is definitely exaggerated. Even the anonymous author of this article admitted that they were aesthetically pleasing, but more so than that they make perfect economic sense. The university and its students are a $316 million impact in our local economy. While small, building a community feeling between our students and the community at large is a strong investment that will only help grow and develop the downtown which is thriving for no small part due to the students, family, and friends of UNA. If the $220 cost for signs is such an issue, I along with many others would happily foot the cost.

As far as legality, please also express your concerns to the countless universities whose downtowns have a variety of colored street signs (including UA whose street signs on University Blvd are black -talk about hard to distinguish!-). From my understanding, those laws are only applicable on state roads anyways.

Finally, there was no mention of sexual assault being present in our Greek community anywhere. That is an absolutely slanderous suggestion which I am not surprised to see stem from this source. Anyone who looks closely at our Greek community will discover that it is one that is academically, civically, and community minded. Various organizations such as SafePlace, Big Brothers Big Sisters, United Way, Ronald Mcdonald House, Military Heroes Foundation, and more benefit greatly from them. Please research your facts more closely and with journalistic integrity before you contribute to the spread of false and degrading information.

First, the cost of the new signs - We estimated the cost using "20 locations" per the TD article. At some of these locations, signs are placed on each side of the street; we estimated at least 25 separate sites (with more stated to come). Then we computed estimated labor and costs in time; in other words, time to make the signs and to install them.

So, let's see...does Dante's comment on salaried employees being the only ones involved mean that these men/women would have been sitting around a cushy office if not fabricating/installing these signs? We sincerely hope that isn't the case. We also hope Dante takes some refresher courses in economics and logic. 

Second, and more importantly, the sexual assault comment - Those who have read our blog from its inception know that sexual assault and abuse is as important a topic to us as waste/theft by government employees. Again, we're not sure if Dante's problem with this point was a lack of logic or he simply wanted to suggest we implied something we didn't.

The term "physical assault" was used by UNA's David Shields in his letter to the Greek community. A better term would have been fisticuffs or fistfights; however, he didn't choose those words. If you have a problem with this term, see him - not us.

Our point is the term "physical assault" includes violent rape. No one anywhere said there had been a rape or other forms of sexual abuse at these frat houses. It's easy to say rape is merely slipping a little Georgia Home Boy into a girl's drink or perhaps even simply pinning a woman to a bed. No, it's been estimated that one-third of all rapes are violent physical assaults, some even leading to the victim's death. If Mr. Shields 
thinks the term "physical assault" excludes rape, he's sadly mistaken.

As a bonus lesson in logic and debate, listing the good organizations do while defending them for certain evil or illegal actions is not anything that's admissible in a court of law. Apples and oranges...and is totally irrelevant to the victims in these five cases. We'll add that also applies to listing the positive impact UNA has on the Shoals economy; no one has disputed that impact, but it does not and should not offset any illegal actions.

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Did the five assaults really happen? We're always amused when someone, usually not a regular reader of our blog, asks us if certain events we've mentioned "really happened." We understand that this is not the only publication to receive such questions.

Due to vulgar language, we deleted a FB comment on yesterday's blog. In this young woman's comment, she stated these five alcohol-fueled incidents really didn't happen. So, do we believe her or David Shields? If these five fistfights leading to hospitalization and legal charges really didn't happen, we suggest she take it up with Mr. Shields. He would be the person defaming the university, not us.

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A parting comment on the street signs, at least for now. One very erudite commenter questioned the relevancy of ALDOT's opinion on the signs being used, since the streets in question are not state highways. We would have once thought this was true; however, by reason of funding or other influence, ALDOT recently scuppered the plans for widening part of College Street in Florence which is in no way a state or federal highway. We requested a comment from ALDOT in Tuscumbia and was referred to Montgomery. We await.

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Caution: PG language (Love the name Julian!)